Mourning Glory (6 page)

Nevertheless, it was unthinkable and ghoulish, a long way
from her own frame of reference. But it did set her to wondering if she could
ever be so cold-blooded, so calculating and amoral, to pursue this bizarre
course of action. And if she did, would she have the resourcefulness, the
acting ability, the blatant insincerity required to make a success out of such
a strategy? She doubted it. And yet, despite its outlandishness, it did suggest
a tantalizing opportunity.

It surprised her that she didn't reject the possibility out
of hand. Did it mean she would have to suspend her own sense of herself, her
so-called dignity, a quality growing more and more illusory with each passing
moment? And would the expenditure of energy be worth the candle? She imagined
platoons of desperate single women of uncertain age with the same idea.

Almost as if she were driving in a trance, she pulled into
the parking lot of the Brodsky Memorial Chapel. It was totally filled and she
was forced to exit the lot, which meant, in her present suggestive state, that
fate had solved the problem for her. But when she reached the exit, a man
wearing a Star of David armband waved the car to the left and another also
wearing an armband gestured insistently that she park in the space he was
designating.

Choices were being made for her, she decided. Destiny was
intervening, she thought foolishly, guiding her actions. She got out of the car
hesitantly, not knowing what to do next.

"This way," another man said. He, too, wore the
official armband, and she found herself going with the flow. People were mostly
silent and appropriately somber. A man at the door asked whether she was here
for the Farber or the Schwartz funeral. The couple ahead of her said Farber and
she nodded and followed the couple up a flight of heavily carpeted stairs to a
darkened chapel crowded with silent, respectful mourners.

Still following the couple, she moved to a seat on a long
polished bench and sat down next to the woman. Gloomy organ music played in the
background.

"Molly was a wonderful person," the woman
whispered to her.

"The best," Grace said, afflicted with an
accelerating desire to escape. Unfortunately, she was seated in the center of
the row and there was no way to leave now without attracting attention.
Instead, she resigned herself to the situation, as if she were watching a
documentary entitled
Jewish Funeral.

She observed that the people did look different than she
had seen at her mother's funeral in Baltimore, although many of their faces
bore the familiar stamp of Mediterranean origin under their suntans. There
were, of course, the regional differences of more colorful clothing and the
absence of drab female papal groupies in somber black. The mourners, too, were
better groomed than their Baltimore counterparts, which reflected both income
and geographical disparity.

There were, of course, vague similarities of ritual,
although the Catholics hands-down offered more ornate spectacle, costuming,
mystery and audiovisual effects than this grim, unadorned auditorium.
Catholics, she told herself, gave great funerals. But then, wasn't their
ceremony more of a bon voyage to a glorious heavenly resort reached through a
corridor lined with angels with white wings playing long trumpets, which led to
golden gates manned by St. Peter himself? Where, after all, did the spirit of
dead Jews go? Was there a Jerusalem station in heaven accepting arrivals?

In front of the auditorium was a closed coffin and on a
small stage behind it was a lectern. The men wore funny little black hats
stamped with the name of the funeral parlor. In the first row, she noted a
group of sniffling and red-eyed mourners of both sexes, who, she assumed, were
the immediate family.

Was this what Mrs. Burns had meant when she advised her to
read the obituaries? Somehow Grace had interpreted this to mean that one made
the initial "contact" at the funeral parlor, simply appearing,
becoming visible to the ... she hesitated as her mind searched for an appropriate
definition. Target? Pigeon? Victim? Mark?

Studying the group in the front row, she could not pick out
anyone who might fit the profile suggested by Mrs. Burns of a distinguished,
very rich Jewish gentleman. She felt a hysterical giggle crawl up her chest and
knew she did not have the restraint to hold it back. Pressing her hand to her
mouth, she felt the sound emerge despite her valiant effort to stifle it.

"I know. I know," the woman next to her
whispered. "Molly Farber was the salt of the earth. Charitable? Nobody was
more charitable. She will be sorely missed by all of us."

Grace nodded, her hands hiding much of her face, making
sounds that were open to the woman's interpretation of stifled sobbing. She
took deep breaths to get herself under control. It was, she knew, less a giggle
of humor than a kind of hysterical comment on the events transpiring before her
eyes.

Again, she surveyed the all-important first row. Still, she
couldn't find anyone who might fill the bill according to Mrs. Burns's suggestion,
although she could sense the logic in what, on the surface, was a serviceable
but bizarre idea.

If one bought into Mrs. Burns's weird premise—and, so far,
Grace was still eons away from a true believer—the ritual of the funeral
offered a kind of preview, an opportunity for observation that was a lot more
efficient than a blind date. She could get a good look at the prospect, study
him under fire, even, if the size of the funeral was any measure, assess his
standing in the community and, perhaps, his financial status. Was it not
logical to assume that the more the widower grieved, the more compelling his
need to assuage his loss?

Mrs. Burns hadn't invented the idea. It was a generally
accepted pop-psychology hypothesis that a widower who was happily married was
more likely to seek to replicate such a situation. Now, how had she come to
such knowledge? Television talk shows, newspapers, comments on the radio, bits
and pieces of trivia from somewhere out there in the glutted information
firmament? Was this insight or bullshit, she wondered, suddenly questioning the
powerful desperation that had driven her to this place.

When the gloomy musical background sound ceased, a man rose
to the lectern. He was youngish, wearing one of those funny black hats, and he
spoke in what seemed like a carefully practiced, mournful cadence, offering the
assemblage a picture of a woman who had devoted her life to husband and
children and who had managed to live to the ripe old age of ninety.

Wrong place, wrong range, Grace realized suddenly. Perhaps
she should have chosen the Schwartz funeral. She felt the hysterical giggle
begin again. This time, she fished quickly for a tissue and used it to press
against her lips and muffle the sound.

She could never do this, she told herself. It would be
impossible for her to be so calculating and cynical. How could she live with
herself? She wished she could get up and leave. The words of the man behind the
lectern lost all meaning as she delved deeper into her thoughts, rebuking
herself for giving in to such cynicism.

But as she debated the question in her mind, she realized
how detached she really was from these proceedings.
I am not here to do
evil,
she assured herself as the logic of the idea began to grow in her
mind. It wasn't as if she would be causing the death of a spouse. She would
simply be taking advantage of an opportunity to bring joy, affection and
rejuvenation, perhaps even love, to a grieving man, filling the void caused by
a profound loss. Where was the harm in that? She could be the silver lining in
the dark cloud.

On the practical side, at least she would be trolling where
the fish were. That, too, was not a crime. All right, so she had a hidden
agenda in the pursuit, and the means might be considered blatantly cynical and parasitic,
but the end result, if it occurred, would be beneficial to both parties.

At least she would have a well-defined objective, and the
fact was that she considered herself a good person, a well-brought-up woman
from a traditional Catholic, rigidly moral and religious Italian family.
Certainly she would be closer in generational mores to such a man than she was
to her own daughter. She would be an asset to a good man, especially a kindly,
decent and generous man, a very generous man. To whom, she vowed, she would be
exceedingly grateful, body and soul.

Yes, she decided, she would repay a man dearly for such
kindness and generosity. Images of herself engaged in the required sexual
gymnastics stimulated another rising giggling hysteric. She would practice
giving great head with a banana and encourage the use of Viagra. Stop this, she
urged herself, remembering with a hot, angry blush the scene with her daughter
and her disgusting copulation a mere couple of hours before.

Marrying rich would certainly offer expanding opportunities
for Jackie. She would meet a better class of people the higher up they went on
the economic ladder. She'd be driving a great car, a Porsche maybe, and buy her
clothes at Saks or Bonwit's or Bergdorf's, clothes of her favorite designers.

Perhaps, too, the boost in fortune might get her into a
good Ivy League college like Harvard or Yale, which would give her
opportunities for success unimaginable in her present status. She would be able
to network, meet the offspring of America's elite, connect with the people who
made the big decisions and meet well-bred young men and women. God knows she
needed that. Especially young men who respected her. No more skinhead idiots
brandishing swastikas, white trash animals on motorcycles who forced her into
unsafe sex. Money attracts money and a better class of people, she decided; the
more money the better.

It comforted her to daydream about a brighter future for
her daughter. Of course, this did not detract from the benefits that would
accrue to her. She supposed she was not without her material needs. She could
envision her own closets full of designer clothes and velvet-covered boxes
filled with jewelry, the real thing, and a regimen of exercise and massage to
keep her figure tight and, when the time came, a tuck or two here or there.
Were these crass aspirations? Perhaps. But her man might want her to obey the
conventions of the class, and she would be a willing participant.

Then there were the house or houses they would live in. She
would read
Architectural Digest
with a specific purpose in mind. After
all, she wouldn't be expected to live in the same house where he had lived with
his late wife. No way. She would have to put her own stamp on things. Create
her own individualized world for his new life. Indeed, it would be her house
that would be a candidate to appear in
Architectural Digest
, and she
would be featured in those photos entering some posh ball in Palm Beach or New York or Paris, London, Venice. God, it was wonderful to think about.

Such thoughts convinced her that there was, indeed, a point
to Mrs. Burns's suggestion, once one got beyond the bold idiocy of the idea and
the necessary subterfuge that would be entailed. That was the hard part. The
initial phase, the acting, the dissimulation. And, calling a spade a spade, the
lying, the outright lying. But if her intentions were basically honest and
good, not evil or sinister or selfish, where was the harm?

It was certainly a better course of action than living on
empty dreams and surrendering to the inevitable life in the lower depths, the
slow lane, the bottom of the barrel. Time for a little realism here, she
rebuked herself. Better to try for the roses than settle for the weeds. Her
optimistic speculation was exciting her.

She thought about possible ages in her target range. The
fifties, of course, would be ideal. But rich men widowed at that age, she had
observed, seemed to look for girls in their twenties, trophy wives. Sixty to
seventy would probably be the logical range for her. Even a young over-seventy
might fill the bill.

Mrs. Burns had suggested a Jewish widower and had given her
reasons, which had at first seemed shallow, stereotypical and comical. She had
heard that oft-repeated cliché, reiterated by Mrs. Burns, that Jewish men were
supposed to be steady family types. They also did not drink, like non-Jews.
Their loving over-possessive mothers were supposed to have instilled in them
gobs of guilt, and when they fooled around they compensated by being even more
generous to their wives, as she had learned by observing them at Saks. Of
course, that wasn't the life she wanted. She would much prefer a faithful
husband who was satisfied with her in every respect.

Certainly, from her observations and experience, Jewish men
seemed to treat their wives a lot better than Italian men, who preferred the
company of other Italian men to their spouses. In her mother's case, she
couldn't blame her father. To her mother every man was a perpetrator of sinful
acts. In fact, most things, especially thoughts, were sinful to her and
required weekly and sometimes daily exorcism by the priests. Grace considered
it a minor miracle, coming from that background, that she had, defying the
devil, ever summoned up the courage to get laid.

It occurred to her suddenly that she was really ignorant
about the aging process of men, especially their sexual capacity. Her
experience with Jason and the dentist had validated Mrs. Burns's assertion that
man's best friend was, indeed, their penis, and getting it up was a matter of
utmost importance to them. They were proud of their erections, especially their
endurance and capacity for orgasms. When that diminished Grace assumed that
their self-worth would be negatively affected.
Viva Viagra,
she thought.

Thinking about this brought on another hot blush that
crawled up her back. She had never gone to bed with anyone over sixty, but the
dentist did have episodes when his erection had abruptly collapsed. The thing
had just deflated, as if someone had put a pin in a balloon, and no amount of
ministering brought it immediately back to life. The dentist was initially
depressed by the episode, although luckily, after a brief nap, he was able to
rise to the occasion, not that it performed any great feats that gave her any
pleasure.